Write It Out: Instruction Video
‘The rice bag spills, that is all, but the grains fall to the floor and so do I. And I cannot pick either of us up. It is all too heavy, the rice and the missing and me, and I have forgotten everything else about that moment except for the tears and the phone and Ken’s voice saying that I don’t have to go to the doctor, but I do need to put on pants and shoes, and then we will talk about the doctor.
It is a bright, sunny day and of course everything is fine. No one is dying, for now. We are meant to keep an eye on it. This is not yet the end of the world. A few exams and a long-distance relationship and the rice shouldn’t be weighty enough to tip the scale, should they?
And so there is guilt braided into the anxiety. It is a rope, a noose, because you have a warm bed and a well-stocked pantry and look, you have found love, and would you just get up off the floor already? Put on your pants and pull yourself together.
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The panic attacks made no sense. They approached in wild waves, rhythmic and anticipated and ill-timed, like at the grocery next to a perfect mound of pink apples or in the shower. I cried and cried, and when they passed, I wrote.
I keep a few of those writings on an old flash drive in my office now, nestled on a shelf between expired contracts and Christmas forever stamps. I pull them out from time to time, just to see, just to remember. When I do, I read the words of a young girl who kept working so hard for more, even when it was making her so much less.’
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